Mobile devices today often use third Generation (3G) or the next generation Long Term Evolution (LTE) standards for wireless networks to support wireless communication and associated voice and data services. The ability to accurately locate mobile devices can be an important adjunct to such voice and data services. For example, a mobile device that places an emergency call may need to be accurately located to enable public safety dispatch to the location of the caller and a user of a mobile device may at times need to receive navigation instructions, directions or a map of their current location. Solutions to support accurate location of mobile devices have been developed and standardized by organizations such as the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the Third Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) and the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), to name just three examples. For location solutions based on 3GPP and OMA standards, a number of positioning protocols have been standardized that control procedures used to position a mobile device when positioning is assisted or managed by a location server. Two prominent positioning protocols comprise the LTE Positioning Protocol (LPP) which is standardized by 3GPP and the LPP Extensions (LPPe) protocol which is standardized by OMA. The LPP protocol may be used by itself or the LPP protocol may be combined with the LPPe protocol to provide greater positioning capability. When LPP and LPPe are used in combination, the combined protocol may be referred to as LPP/LPPe.
In order to make use of such positioning protocols as LPP and LPPe to position mobile devices in an indoor environment and sometimes in an outdoor environment, a location server typically needs information on terrestrial wireless transmitters nearby to any mobile device being positioned, whose signals the mobile device can measure and/or which can measure signals from the mobile device, in order to determine the location of the mobile device. Terrestrial transmitters may include: (i) access points (APs) supporting WiFi transmission as defined by IEEE 802.11 protocols, Bluetooth® or Near Field Communication (NFC); (ii) cellular base stations (BSs) which may support LTE or some other 3GPP or 3GPP2 3G technology; and (iii) Femtocells or Home Base Stations supporting small cells and cells in home and office environments. The information that is needed by a location server for such terrestrial transmitters can comprise the location and the transmission characteristics (e.g. signal power and timing) of each AP, BS and Femtocell. Some or all of the information related to terrestrial transmitters may be obtained by a location server by receiving crowdsourcing measurements of terrestrial transmitter sent by a large number of mobile devices. Although the concept and use of crowdsourcing is now well established, the support of crowdsourcing in an efficient and flexible manner (e.g. using the LPP/LPPe positioning protocol) has not yet been resolved. For example, it may be beneficial to control the rate at which measurement data is crowdsourced by mobile devices to avoid overloading a server and using up unnecessary signaling resources including battery consumption at mobile devices. It may also be beneficial to control which types of measurement data are crowdsourced and for which APs, BSs and/or Femtos in order to avoid providing measurement data to a server that the server does not need or already has and to provide measurement data for APs, BSs and/or Femtocells that a server does need and may not already have. It may be further beneficial to allow mobile devices to negotiate with a server the extent to which crowdsourcing will be supported to save on mobile device and network resources, battery consumption and possibly costs to the user of conveying measurement data over a wireless network. There is thus a need for techniques and methods that enable control of crowdsourcing by both location servers and mobile devices.